During the Weinert Center annual WAVE Board Meeting luncheon, we gathered to celebrate the achievements of our entrepreneurship students. Hosts Dan Olszewski and Jon Eckhardt had the pleasure of awarding the entrepreneurship awards listed below.
Alan C. Filley Outstanding Undergraduate Award
Al Filley was a professor of management in the Wisconsin School of Business from 1961 to 1998 and this award was to recognize him for all of his contributions to entrepreneurship. The recipient of this award was Shawn Michels, an accounting and marketing major who graduated in May 2018. He plans to continue working on his startup, Safe Rotations, and pursue a partnership with an experienced medical company.
Robert W. Pricer Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Scholarship Award
This award was named in honor of entrepreneurship professor Robert (Bob) W. Pricer who retired in 2002. Bob was selected by BusinessWeek as one of the nation’s top 10 entrepreneurship professors in 1996 and received numerous University of Wisconsin-Madison honors for his teaching and public service. This scholarship is made possible by the generosity of Jim Weinert. The recipient of this award was Erin Tenderholt, an entrepreneurship and risk management and insurance major who will graduate in May 2019. She is currently working on her startup, Blexx Technology and recently won the Elevator Pitch Olympics that was part of the Early Stage Symposium. Erin was featured in an article in the Wisconsin State Journal on Friday, November 9.
Jon G. and Susan S. Udell Scholarship in Entrepreneurship
Jon and Susan Udell established this scholarship to award an MBA candidate with a passion for entrepreneurship. Jon was a professor of marketing and worked on free enterprise education in the School and with Bob Pricer and Al Filley merged their programs to create the Enterprise Center, later renamed the Weinert Center. The recipient of this award was Arek Schmocker, an MBA student in the Corporate Finance and Investment Banking Center. He had a summer internship at Organic Valley in La Farge, Wisconsin as a Strategic Analyst. He currently works at the Business & Entrepreneurship Clinic and will graduate in May 2019.
James J. Weinert Outstanding WAVE Entrepreneurship Award
Each year the WAVE class selects one of their own students for special recognition regarding advice and assistance in making the entire class’s ideas better. The recipient of this award was Greg Forkins, MBA student in the Center for Brand and Product Management. Greg was a Project Assistant for the Weinert Center in the 2017-2018 academic year and graduated in May 2018. Greg’s post-graduation work has taken him to Tyson Foods in Chicago, Illinois as an Associate Brand Manager.
The Schulze Entrepreneurship Challenge
The Schulze Entrepreneurship Challenge is the largest undergraduate national business pitch competition. The competition started with 149 entrants and the top 25 teams received an all-expenses paid trip to Minneapolis to compete. Evan Wolfenden, Ben Farley and their other teammates from Zero Barrier finished fifth in the 2018 competition. They developed a patent pending simultaneous area 3D metal printer. Evan and Ben are both mechanical engineering students and Evan took the New Ventures course.
Other Notable Awards
The MBA Program Office awarded three of our WAVE and Fellowship students with very prestigious awards. This is a great example of entrepreneurs making the School a better place!
MBA Jerred Service Award: Greg Forkins (WAVE and Fellowship ’18): This award emphasizes a student’s service activities while maintaining a cumulative GPA of 3.7 or higher.
MBA Leadership Award: Andrew Foster (WAVE and Fellowship ’18): For display of extraordinary leadership skills and service to the MBA Program.
MBA Outstanding Student Award: Linda Liu (WAVE and Fellowship ’18): This award emphasizes a student’s overall contributions to the MBA Program/community while maintaining a cumulative GPA of 3.7 or higher.
The recipient for the Computer Sciences Department Service Award for Women was Jayapradha Rangarajan (WAVE ’18). This was awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (WACM).
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